


Five Times He Was Told To Breathe and One Time He Did

by spilled_ink



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Gen, Implied M/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, My First Work in This Fandom, Past Character Death, this escalated so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1750460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spilled_ink/pseuds/spilled_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the can. Herc has trouble sometimes, with breathing, with staying alive, and everyone he's close to knows this . . . And sometimes, even after they're gone, they still remind him to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times He Was Told To Breathe and One Time He Did

Hercules Hansen wakes with his eyes wide but unseeing and with sweat running in little rivulets down his back, cooling rapidly on his forehead. The echoes of a scream are still stuck in his throat but his vocal cords are too tight to make a noise, too tight to allow him any release…

He chokes on a whimper instead, still bolt upright, muscles painfully tight just hoping and wishing and praying and waiting for someone to hold his hand or sweep a lock of hair away from his eyes or kiss it better or, or…or-

Or he forgets, sometimes, that they’re all dead.

There is no-one left.

His fists wrap tight around the bedsheets, the white linen knotted like the veins in his hands and as warm as the blood that runs through them. 

They’re warm in a way that means body heat, like a ghost pain, ghost warmth because they’re not there anymore and no-one occupies the other side of the bed.

Too warm.

Too hot.

Too suffocating.

It pulls him in regardless.

And then he’s drowning again, his thoughts violent enough to rival those of a gale force hurricane, powerful enough to be the tidal pull of the harbour, loud enough to shatter his eardrums. He feels… he feels like the Kaiju are back again but miniature this time, personal demons in his head, pulling his brain apart and t o r t u r i n g him.

It comes in rules of five:

Angela.

Chuck.

Scott.

Stacker.

And him.

He drowns over and over again and even that comes in rules of five till there’s nothing left of him to resurface. 

He didn’t think, didn’t think didn’t think didn’t think that it would be so hard after they’d won but what he lost keeps flashing in front of his eyes every night and he can’t think can’t think can’t think in words or sentences or speak what he says and he can’t. Think.

He counts instead.

One; for a wife he never got to love for long enough, the same wife that he chose to sacrifice for

Two; A boy that he couldn’t save in the end proving that his first sacrifice was a waste, a boy who’s smile reminded him of

Three; a brother he’d lost because he couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle what he’d done, couldn’t handle him the same way he couldn’t handle

Four: his commanding officer and the first man, first lover, first everything after he’d done it all, after he’d made all the decisions, the first man that made

Five: so complete and so broken but could pull him out of a nightmare by simply uttering his name or placing a hand on his lower back, heat and flesh and warmth that woke him up and reminded him to

Breathe.

It’s almost as if he’s forgotten how but then there are more memories, memories that won’t let him go, won’t let him end it, won’t make it real but sure as hell makes it less painful.

“Breathe, Herc!” and Angela laughs as his face furrows, so worried but so proud at the same time, when the baby kicks in her stomach and

“Breathe Dad!” Chuck screams mentally on their first Drift because he starts to chase the rabbit as he hears his sons thought, breaking and angry and so much like

“Breath, Hercules” because it wasn’t a big deal to Scott that he’d ever do that but it’s such a big deal to him 

“Breathe.” large hands on either side of his face shortly after he’d lost Angela. Wide palms and dark skin, voice rich and deep, the same voice that Stacker used as a Marshall.

And everything comes in rules of five: five memories to break him ; five memories to make him ; five faces that shift and morph and merge into each other and click together till it’s one voice that snaps him out of it.

“Breathe.”

And then he remembers how, his fists unwrapping themselves from the blanket, perspiration dry, the air curiously cool again. The storm has passed. The ghost warmth lingers though, waiting for another night, but for now, breathing will have to do.

**Author's Note:**

> This escalated into something that I didn't quite expect but then again, he reminds me of myself sometimes, going over and over and over the mistakes of his past. This helped me remember though, that we all need to breathe... and the counting helps. Try it. Count to five. Breathe.


End file.
